


Well, that's unfortunate

by Roshwen



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: A Golden City, A Stubborn Saint, An Equally Stubborn Army Doctor, Featuring: Pearly Gates, Gen, Gunpowder, Heavenly Music, Humour, No tragicness allowed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-03
Updated: 2013-04-03
Packaged: 2017-12-07 08:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/746650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roshwen/pseuds/Roshwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Reichenbach. After he dies, John finds out Sherlock is not where he ought to be. </p><p>Then again, what else is new?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Well, that's unfortunate

**Author's Note:**

> This is just for fun, so _please_ don't take this depiction of Heaven and Hell seriously.

It all happened so incredibly fast, John didn't even have time to feel relieved. Two cries, one phone call and it was all over.

_‘Gun!’_

_‘John! Watch out!’_

_‘Hello, 999? We need an ambulance down here ASAP, possibly lethal bullet wound. Victim is a male in his late thirties, got hit below his left shoulder. Suspected nicked lung and artery, situation critical.’_

ooOoo

John opened his eyes, blinking against a sudden flood of golden light washing over him. Music filled his ears, light as the tripping of an ant but at the same time reaching down to something deep within him and nestling there in a warm and slightly uncomfortable knot.

John breathed in. Or did something similar, since he was not sure breathing was something you did at this place.

This was it, then. He made it.

The air around him was warm and soft, heavy with a scent he couldn’t name but which reminded him of all that had been good in the world, of homemade baking and tea and warm fires and gunpowder.

He frowned. Surely that last one wasn’t right? He was pretty sure the tales his Gran had told him had never featured anything deadly. That was kind of beside the point, when you came to think of it.

He put the thought away for later consideration, together with the knot in his stomach which seemed to grow bigger every other second, and walked onward, towards two enormous gates apparently made out of solid pearl. Behind them, he could make out the skyline of a city, apparently made out of solid gold.

He smiled. At least his Gran had gotten this part exactly right.

He briefly wondered when he’d see her (he didn’t doubt the fact that he would, seeing as the woman had spent half of her life in church and the other half educating her grandchildren), but soon the prospect being reunited with someone else entirely filled his mind.

Somewhere, in that golden city, Sherlock would be waiting for him. He was sure of it.

The smile blossomed into a full grin at the image of Sherlock, sitting somewhere in a golden apartment or flying around golden streets, harassing angels, deducing life stories and nasty deaths and generally being a very bored and very persistent pain in the heavenly ass.

Would he be surprised? Surely John was here before it was his time, but he had the sort of feeling that Sherlock wouldn’t exactly have been clinging to life either, had it been John who had gone first. The two of them went together, wherever it was. That’s how it had been ever since that first day at Bart’s.

Suddenly the longing to be with Sherlock again, to see him, touch him, talk to him, to finally say what they somehow never got around to saying threatened to overwhelm him, crush him into a tiny ball of need. But Watsons are made of sterner stuff so John took another metaphorical breath, and then another, and quickened his pace until he arrived at something very similar to a cashier’s booth at the foot of the Gates.

Inside the booth, a large man with the biggest beard John had ever seen was browsing through a book the size of a kitchen table. It must be an incredibly engrossing volume, since the man didn’t even glance up when John first walked up. Only when he very hesitantly knocked the counter did the man (St. Peter, John’s memory of his Gran helpfully supplied) grunted in annoyance, place a bookmark between two pages and give him a thoroughly uninterested look.

‘Name?’ he asked, giving a perfect impression of someone who has been given an incredibly dull job for an incredibly long time. John had expected a more personal welcome, but he soon realised that he must be far from the first there that day.

John swallowed. A bit unsure, because honestly, how do you act in front of a two-thousand year old saint who is in charge of letting you in to paradise, he managed to say his name. ‘John. Watson.’

‘Middle name?’

‘Hamish.’

At the mention of his name, all indifference suddenly cleared off of St. Peter’s face, to be replaced with strange concern. ‘John Hamish Watson,’ he asked sharply, as if to clarify. ‘And you’re an army doctor, served with the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers and lived in London, England?’

John nodded, a bit unsettled by the abrupt change in the saint’s behaviour. ‘That would be me.’

Judging by his suddenly sagging posture and the heavy sigh he heaved, this was not the answer St. Peter wanted to hear. The concern had vanished and when he looked at John, his eyes were dark with inexplicable sadness.

‘I am terribly sorry, John,’ he said and the tone of his voice turned John’s gut to ice. He knew that tone, he had had to use it himself far too often. First in the army, to men who had been hoping against all hope that he would be able to save their fallen comrade, and later, in the surgery when a test that should have been routine turned into something else entirely.

Bracing himself for whatever the bad news turned out to be, the next words took him completely by surprise.

‘He is not here,’ St. Peter said. He didn’t specify, but that wasn’t necessary. There was only one person John wanted to meet in Heaven, besides possibly his Gran, and it sure as Hell wasn’t Abraham.

Confusion and fury both striving to gain the upper hand rose inside him and made his vision swim. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, failing to keep his voice steady. ‘He has to be here, he has to be. No matter what he thought of himself, he was a good man and he’s got to be somewhere in there and I need to see him, _please.’_ The last word was nothing short of a whine.

‘I’m sorry, John,’ St. Peter said again patiently, ‘but he really isn’t. He is neither in Heaven nor in Hell, for the simple reason that he is not dead yet.’

 _Simple_ was not the word John would have chosen. ‘But…but… Moriarty. He…’ was all he managed.

‘Oh, he’s dead all right,’ St. Peter said with a wide grin that could only mean that someone very unpleasant was in deep trouble. ‘He’s down there, though, having the time of his…well, afterlife. Last thing I heard was him and Genghis Khan combining forces to overthrow Lucifer.’

John, still reeling with shock, only heard half of it. If Sherlock wasn’t here, then everything had been completely useless; from not looking both ways before crossing to actively seeking out serial killers until someone finally had had the mercy to give him what he was after. He had been fighting against all his instincts screaming at him to hold on to life when all he wanted was to _let go,_ and finally, he had succeeded.

The injury had been severe, but not immediately fatal. Help had arrived in time. He could have pulled through.

He had chosen to give up. Because, really, what would have been the point of surviving when half of him was already dead?

He’d grasped the opportunity to be reunited with Sherlock with both hands, only to find out the bastard was not where he was supposed to be.

John shook his head, a smile carefully making its way across his face. _Of course_ Sherlock wasn’t where he was supposed to be. He had never done the expected thing in life, there was absolutely no reason he should start now in death. Or not in death.

The complete and utter _arse._

‘In that case,’ he said after a long moment’s contemplation, ‘I think I’d better go. You know, come back some other time.’

The lame joke was completely lost on the saint. ‘You can’t, John,’ he said sternly, hundreds of years of telling people where to go and what to do suddenly and horribly visible on his face. ‘Once you are here, you can’t go back. I’m sorry.’

Unfortunately for St. Peter, John had far too much experience with people trying to intimidate him into something he didn’t want to do. ‘No, I’m sorry. I really can’t stay here, not when… no.’

‘John, it’s impossible,’ St. Peter tried as a last resort when John turned his back on him and started walking back in the direction where he’d come from. At the cry of the saint, however, he turned around and his expression stunned St. Peter into silence.

‘You watch me,’ he said.

He started walking again, but stopped and turned back one more time. ‘Just one more thing, though. Why does it smell of gunpowder in here?’

St. Peter launched at the question with the relief of a student finally able to make sense of a math test. ‘Gunpowder, eh? Haven’t heard that one before. Well, not often, anyway.’

He smiled a very odd smile at John. ‘Everyone experiences the scent of Heaven differently,’ he explained. ‘But in the end, it’s always the same. It’s the smell of home.’

Home. The word almost threw John off balance and planted a tiny seed of doubt in his mind, no not doubt but _yearning,_ yearning for a place to rest, to be safe. For one minute moment he was oh so very tempted to listen to St. Peter, who was watching and quietly encouraging him to walk through the Gates.

Then another whiff of gunpowder entered his nose, making the decision for him and now there was no power in Heaven or Hell that could stop him. He went back.

Or, if there was Someone Who could stop him, He didn’t make much of an effort. John did think he heard a very faint but very pleased edge entering into the music around him, but it might as well have been his imagination. John didn’t care.

He just put one foot in front of the other and walked and this time, he didn’t stop, not for a long, long time. He walked back through years and decades and ages, over every colour in the visible spectrum and some more in the invisible spectrum, across the length of the universe and back, until he opened his eyes and took a deep and very non-metaphorical breath.

Through an oxygen mask.

The mask, together with the dull pain in his shoulder ( _again_ ), a throat that felt like parchment, various pieces of beeping machinery and the frankly nauseating smell of antiseptic were all quickly assessed, categorised and filed under Location – Hospital – ICU in the split second before he made out the tall, brooding figure in the chair by his side, glaring at him.

‘You flatlined.’ It was a statement, an accusation and a declaration, all in one.

John let his eyes fall shut, too worn out to do anything but silently bask in the relief and joy washing over him. _Found you,_ he thought as he felt Sherlock take his hand, an anchor to keep him grounded as he drifted off again. _Found you, Gunpowder man._

_Home._

 


End file.
